She
got her crew stranded in the Delta Quadrant, subjected them to Neelix’s
cooking and put them in mortal danger on a weekly basis. This year, however,
it looks like Captain Janeway is going to get them home. “I have loved
these people,” says Kate Mulgrew

By Melissa J Perenson

ANYONE
who thinks that being the captain of a starship is all glamour, think again.
“I’ve been in the trenches with these guys,” says Kate Mulgrew of her time
with her colleagues in the acting ranks on Star Trek: Voyager. Mulgrew
has donned her Starfleet uniform to assume command of Voyager as Captain
Kathryn Janeway, a woman whose determination to see her crew home has never
wavered. And the years of early set calls and shoots that last well into
the night have given the actress ample time to bond with the acting ensemble
that comprises her crew. It’s not surprising, then, that that bond is what
Mulgrew cites as the foremost thing she’ll miss when the series comes to
a close at the end of this season.

“To
have been so closely allied to them for seven years, and to know that this
will abruptly end rankles and divides my heart,” she admits. “I’m struggling
with that, even now, in preparation for the moment when I’ll have to say
goodbye to them. For me, it’s always, essentially, about people. And I
have loved these people. I have taken this journey with them. That’s what
I’m grappling with in this final season.”

In spite of the intense and often gruelling
schedule, the role of Janeway is one she describes as “a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity”.

Appropriately,
at the mid-point through shooting the show’s seventh and final series,
Mulgrew’s tone becomes reflective. “My thoughts are introspective,” Mulgrew
says. “This is the end of a remarkable chapter in my life. And as it unfolds
this final year, I find that there’s a real poignancy to it.”

From
the comfortable perspective afforded by 20-20 hindsight, the years have
passed “very quickly. Unerringly quickly,” adds Mulgrew. Likewise, the
foreknowledge that this is indeed the final season has provided something
of a mental edge going into the home stretch of episodes. “No doubt about
it. That’s one of the great advantages of this series — we knew that going
in. It certainly relieves us of the burden of being shocked. And we’ve
had seven years to prepare ourselves.”

Given the finality of this season, preparation
is perhaps the keyword. This season has been more relaxed than in years
past, and not just because the cast is well-versed with one another, both
on-screen and off. Brannon Braga, former executive producer, has shifted
his attentions to developing the next Star Trek series, and newly anointed
executive producer Kenneth Biller has assumed the day-to-day responsibilities
on the show. That transition has resulted in less 11th hour script deliveries
to the cast. “That’s been very effectively handled this season, though,
and I’m grateful for that. I suppose we have Ken Biller to credit there,”
offers Mulgrew. “That’s great, that’s marvellous, that the writers are
finally understanding that of course they can get the work done in 12 hours
just like everybody else. And that we don’t have to get these revisions
at 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night, which is just ridiculous. [It was that way]
for many years.”

While
some actors might find it hard to get a script piecemeal, without knowing
the full implications of a scene in the bigger picture, Mulgrew’s concerns
were typically more immediate and practical. “Generally speaking, Janeway
would not have known the resolution, so it’s more interesting to play it
as not knowing. More challenging, at any rate,” she points out.

Rather, the many last-minute revisions, “made
it harder for me as an actress and a human being because I wasn’t getting
the sleep that I should get, because I was waiting for the script revisions
to come,” Mulgrew says matter-of-factly. “And then I’m sitting up and re-learning
the lines. Which is my habit. I never go into work cold. I don’t believe
in it. I’m very well-paid. I don’t go to bed without studying, and that
was a hardship when I wanted to go to sleep. But it certainly never killed
me. And I understand that’s how it is; I’ve been around [the business]
for 28 years, so these things do not throw me terribly.”

It takes a lot to phase the cool, calm and
ever-so-collected captain. Not even the usual disruptions of conflict on
the set can shake Mulgrew — a consummate professional — off-course from
the task at hand. “That’s the nature of the beast,” she says patiently.
“Conflicts between actors and writers, between actors and actors, between
producers and directors. It’s the nature of night-time television that
these conflicts should exist, because we’re different people, and as one
increasingly possesses one’s own character, those tensions can also become
even stronger. For instance, I would state very frankly that I feel that
I own Janeway now, in a way that even the writers do not. Therefore, if
I find her saying something that I consider very inappropriate to Janeway,
I will simply call that in. Generally speaking, they have been not only
respectful and attentive, but they’ve been quite collaborative. And sometimes
they haven’t.

“I think the writers watch as the character
develops,” she adds realistically. “Some actors do that more effectively
than others, and I think in my case they grew to trust me. Now they pretty
much understand, exactly, my possession of Janeway, and they know how to
write her.”

The writers didn’t always know how to write
for Janeway, the first female captain to head up a Star Trek series, and
it showed in the early episodes of the first season. As time passed, and
Mulgrew grew more confident in the role, so too did the writers and producers.
“I think there was initially a struggle with my being a woman, and they
were concerned about my inherent command and authority,” she reflects.
“The first couple of seasons were tough; I was highly scrutinized. It seemed
to me everything was analyzed to an inch of its being, and then when they
saw I could not only command the ship but do it with a degree of aplomb
they began to give me some slack. And that is when the true creative process
begins.”

To an extent, though, you can’t blame them
—at the outset, Janeway began with a lot of gusto and bravado, but she
was “a little overwhelmed with this command,” notes Mulgrew. “An intrepid
ship, wonderful senior officiers, and then to instantly find herself in
that excruciating dilemma [to be stranded or sacrifice an alien race],
and then electing to save the Ocampans, thereby stranding us in the Delta
Quadrant... it put Janeway immediately into a kind of a crunch mode, out
of which she did not emerge for a few years.”

That
so-called ‘crunch’ mode gave way to a lighter, freer Janeway, as seen by
the show’s fourth season. Her hair no longer pulled back in a tight bun,
this Janeway was freer to explore and freer to command. “She became much
looser, much more of a risk-taker, I think. I would say she allowed her
feelings and the depth of what those feelings mean to her to show there
is more levity, more enjoyment of the moment. She is much less cerebral
and much more visceral.”

As time has worn on, more and more of Kate
Mulgrew is reflected in Kathryn Janeway. It was inevitable, perhaps: “More
and more, as the writers and I come to fully understand that one is not
as interesting without the other. I have always likened it to a love affair:
it takes a long time to make a commitment from the writers to the character,
and from the character to the writers. They begin to write in the voice
that belongs not only to the character that they have devised, but they
are listening to the actress who is portraying that character. And you
take more risks as you become relaxed and you realize you are out of the
trenches and onto the field.”

It’s those kinds of risks in front of the
camera that have kept things interesting for Mulgrew over the past seven
years.

Good writing is the key, she notes. “And one’s
partner is crucial to the process. So if you’ve got good writing and a
good [acting] partner, it’s a pretty terrific feeling, and I’ve been blessed
with both of those opportunities time and again on this series.”

Be it the cloud of nostalgia or the reality
of strong, tightly-written episodes leading up to the series’ grand farewell,
Mulgrew has found those standout moments throughout Season Seven. “There
are so many, my head is really swimming, there are so many,” she says.

The season started out with an otherworldly
challenge of prosthetic proportions, in which Janeway donned Borg make-up
for part two of Unimatrix Zero. But the actress waves off any discomfort
the lengthy and potentially uncomfortable make-up process caused. “It’s
fine. I went in, I sat down, and it only took those guys three hours —
these make-up artists are highly skilled people,” she says. “Then I went
in and did the work, had to do that three or four times, and it doesn’t
bother me, it’s sort of challenging.”

Repression proved an intriguing episode, because
it found new ways to address old issues of the Maquis; issues of loyalty
that are bound to resurface as Voyager makes its way closer to home. “That’s
exactly right,” agrees Mulgrew. “But from a selfish point of view, it’s
also always great fun to work with Tim Russ [Tuvok] when he gets something
juicy to do, because there’s such a viable and passionate actor there.
And I always love that when they give him those breaks.”

The
two-hour episode Flesh and Blood provided similarly salient moments, this
time with the Doctor (Robert Picardo). “There’s a wonderful scene at the
end between the two of us; he wants to defect and go to another ship, and
I have to confront him at the end. I had to confront the reality that I
enhanced his protocols to such an extent that he really is endowed with
humanity,” explains Mulgrew.

While Mulgrew often finds the writing to have
some meaning buried deep within, the script for Shattered left her a bit
bewildered, she admits. “That was Chakotay and me. That was a bit of a
wacky script. Temporal prime directive, where Voyager goes through many
temporal barriers. Time zones, back and forth, pre-Season One, and where
we are now. I’m not sure what it was about.”

Even after the depth of episodes like the
sixth season’s Memorial and the fun of episodes like the fifth season’s
Bride of Chaotica!, the fifth season opener, Night, remains one of Mulgrew’s
all-time faves. “Night I liked. But I don’t think the audience liked it
so much. The audience wanted Janeway to be a little more forward looking.
And I had hoped that they would look inward with me,” she ponders. “I liked
it because it was introspective. I like it because it dealt with the loneliness
of command. I like it because it gives Janeway a lot to do on a deeper
level than she’s accustomed to dwelling in. And of course I like it as
an actress. I think it’s a very powerful and substantive theme — that of
loneliness in command — and I think that Brannon wrote a beautiful script.
I will always say that Braga is a hell of a writer — very edgy, very dark.
He knows how to go down there. And I loved playing it.”

With
more than half of the season’s episodes filmed, there’s not a whole lot
of time to wrap up existing storylines, or introduce new ones for that
matter. The main thing Mulgrew wants to see is for the captain to say an
appropriate farewell to her crew. “It needs to be said, in various scenes,
how fond I am of these characters. It needs to be explored,” Mulgrew notes.
“And unless I’m mistaken, it’s more emotional than it is anything else.
So we need to put some emotional periods to some of these relationships.”
There’s some unfinished business between Janeway and her second-in-command,
Chakotay (Robert Beltran), too. “In these last 10 episodes, it would be
wonderful to fully resolve this relationship between Chakotay and Janeway,
which is an intimate relationship without the sexual ramifications. How
intimate is it? What do they mean to each other? What have they lived through
in these seven years? Is there a future for them as friends, and if so,
what kind of a future? I think that needs to be wrapped up a little bit;
that’s unresolved.”

While she always knew it was coming, Mulgrew
says she never really envisioned what, exactly, those final episodes might
be. “I think at this point, I’m living it. It’s interesting the way that
they seem to be delaying getting us home,” she notes. “Now the momentum
is such that they’re going to have to start to develop the final arc pretty
quickly. Are we going home, are we not, if we’re not — what’s going to
happen? And so on, and so forth. I should make it very clear to you that
I know nothing. I’ve been told nothing. They’re extremely careful of that
upstairs. The writers are very protective of their material and their ideas,
and they do not share them with us in advance, so don’t ask me, because
I don’t know.”

While she’ll certainly miss aspects of life
aboard Voyager, Mulgrew is already contemplating what she’ll do when she
retires from Starfleet this spring. “I’m going back to the theatre,” she
says, though her specific plans are vague as yet. Rather, she intends to
spend time with her family. “My mother is not well, some of the people
very close to me are struggling right now, so I think I’d just like to
give my time, my heart, and my life to my loved ones.

“I’m very much looking forward to the end.
Because I’m very much looking forward to the rest of my life.”